Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

by Mander, Jerry

• ISBN13: 9780688082741
• ISBN10: 0688082742
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-11
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

A total departure from previous writing about television, this book is the first ever to advocate that the medium is not reformable. Its problems are inherent in the technology itself and are so dangerous -- to personal health and sanity, to the environment, and to democratic processes -- that TV ought to be eliminated forever. Weaving personal experiences through meticulous research, the author ranges widely over aspects of television that have rarely been examined and never before joined together, allowing an entirely new, frightening image to emerge. The idea that all technologies are "neutral," benign instruments that can be used well or badly, is thrown open to profound doubt. Speaking of TV reform is, in the words of the author, "as absurd as speaking of the reform of a technology such as guns."

Author Biography

Jerry Mander holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Economics, spent 15 years in the advertising business, including five as president and partner of Freeman, Mander & Gossage, San Francisco. After quitting commercial advertising, he achieved national fame for his public service campaigns, leading the Wall Street Journal to call him "the Ralph Nader of advertising." In 1972 he founded the country's first non-profit ad agency

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Belly of the Beast	p. 13
Adman Manque
Engulfed by the Sixties
The Replacement of Experience
The Unification of Experience
War to Control the Unity Machine	p. 29
Advancing from the Sixties to the Fifties
Style Supersedes Content
Television at Black Mesa
The Illusion of Neutral Technology
Before the Arguments: A Comment on Style
The Mediation of Experience
The Walling of Awareness	p. 53
Mediated Environments
Sensory-Deprivation Environments
Rooms inside Rooms
Expropriation of Knowledge	p. 69
Direction Education
Motel Education
Adrift in Mental Space	p. 86
Science Fiction and Arbitrary Reality
Eight Ideal Conditions for the Flowering of Autocracy
Popular Philosophy and Arbitrary Reality
Schizophrenia and the Influencing Machine
The Colonization of Experience
Advertising: The Standard-Gauge Railway	p. 115
The Creation of "Value"
Redeveloping the Human Being
Commodity People
Breaking the Skin Barrier
The Inherent Need to Create Need
Buying Ourselves Back
The Delivery System's Delivery System
The Centralization of Control	p. 134
Economic Growth and Patriotic Consumption
The Trickle-Down Theory
Beneficiaries of the Advertising Fantasy
The Effect on Individuals
Flaws in the Fantasy
The Depression Never Ended
Domination of the Influencing Machine
Effects of Television on the Human Being
Anecdotal Reports: Sick, Crazy, Mesmerized	p. 157
Invisible Phenomenon
Dimming Out the Human
Artificial Touch and Hyperactivity
Television Is Sensory Deprivation
The Ingestion of Artificial Light	p. 170
Health and Light
Outdoors to Indoors
Seeking the Light
Serious Research
How Television Dims the Mind	p. 192
Hypnosis
Television Bypasses Consciousness
Television Is Sleep Teaching
Television Is Not Relaxing
How We Turn into Our Images	p. 216
Humans Are Image Factories
The Concrete Power of Images
Metaphysics to Physics
Image Emulation: Are We All Taped Replays?
Imitating Media
The Replacement of Human Images by Television	p. 240
Suppression of Imagination
The Inherent Believability of All Images
All Television Is Real
Scientific Evidence
The Irresistibility of Images
The Inherent Biases of Television
Information Loss	p. 263
Bias against the Excluded
Fuzzy Images: The Bias against Subtlety
The Bias away from the Sensory
Images Disconnected from Source	p. 283
The Elimination of "Aura"
The Bias toward Death
Separation from Time and Place
Condensation of Time: The Bias against Accuracy
Artificial Unusualness	p. 299
Instinct to the Extraordinary
The Bias toward Technique as Replacement of Content
In Favor of "Alienated" Viewing
The Bias to Highlighted Content: Toward the Peaks, Away from the Troughs
The Pieces That Fall through the Filter	p. 323
Thirty-three Miscellaneous Inherent Biases
Postscript: Impossible Thoughts
Television Taboo	p. 347
Acknowledgments	p. 359
Bibliography	p. 363
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